Collaborative efforts for indigenous languages documentation and revitalization in Paraguay

Presented by Celeste Escobar at the Language Documentation and Archiving Conference, Berlin & Online, 4-6 Sept, 2024.

Multimedia resources were developed for Maká (Mataguaya), Paĩ Tavyterã Guaraní (Tupí-Guaraní) and Ayorean (Zamucoan) in indigenous communities in Paraguay (lower Amazonian Basin) from 2021 until the present. This presentation focus on the collaborative work to propose the development of contents for learning and revitalization materials in multimedia formats in and with the involved communities. Documenting the language with different levels of grammar content for communicative use was one of the main focus. The approach for the elaboration of resources for revitalization purposes was applying “multimodality” (Kress 1997; Stein 2007; Boch 2016), from which, the way the new generations of indigenous languages native speakers learn, communicate and express themselves using different means. At the same time, these materials are meant to be used in hybrid learning environments in the face of the rapid displacement and jeopardy of losing the richness of their cultural diversity embedded in the languages of this work. These experiences also are meant to show the contextualized approach according to each case taking into consideration that though they are all endangered languages, their sociolinguistic contexts may affect the type of documentation and revitalization process. However, what they all share in common is that native speakers were actively involved and constantly consulted in the process of documenting and generating the cited multimedia resources.